Immortal Hate (Harry Bauer Book 5)

by Blake Banner

  “You make me sick!”

  She wrenched free from my grip, turned and ran away toward the churchyard, where she’d left her truck earlier that day. I watched her run and wondered about stepping into the bar for a nightcap. But I decided against it. What I needed right then was sleep, and to plan my next move. So far it had all been pretty crazy improvisation, and all things considered it had played out well—even if not strictly according to the colonel’s criteria—but the next moves would be trickier. I might actually have to be a little bit subtle. I grinned to myself. The colonel would like that.

  * * *

  I got up late, at nine thirty AM, called room service for breakfast at ten and went to shower and dress. I took my time, switching from hot to cold water, trying to wash away the more vivid memories of the night before, then stepped out and shaved.

  As I was toweling my hair, there was a tap at the door. I pulled on my jeans and pulled open the door. Maria was there in jeans and a long-sleeved, purple silk blouse. She was pushing a trolley with coffee, rye toast, scrambled eggs and thick-cut marmalade. Her face was a concrete wall holding back any expression.

  “Breakfast is from eight to nine. I should have told you. I prepared you this myself.”

  She spoke as she pushed the trolley into the room to where I had a small table by an open window overlooking the pool. As she started to unload it I said, “My breakfast is at six. I’m up late because of your boyfriend.”

  She stood motionless, staring out at the pool. When she finally spoke again there was a catch in her voice. “He is not my boyfriend, and if you don’t like it here why don’t you leave? There are plenty of other places where you can write your novel.”

  “Sure, but how many of them have such a rich source of inspiration?”

  “Inspiration?” She twisted her head, but not enough to look at me. “Inspiration? Is that what you call it? Murder, mutilation? Decapitating a man, throwing his head on my dinner table?”

  “I thought you were the great expert on reality. You tell me how it goes, Maria? It’s OK if these things happen so long as you don’t see it? Is that how it goes? It’s OK to murder people, it’s OK to maim and mutilate them, and torture them, it’s OK to get young kids hooked on drugs that will destroy their lives, and push that shit in the schoolyard—all of that is OK just so long as you don’t have to see it on your dinner table, beside the lobster and the oysters?”

  “Shut up!”

  I took a step toward her. “No. I don’t shut up. Ever. I’m here to introduce you to reality. While you were dancing with him, letting him kiss your neck and stroke your back, did it cross your mind that those hands, and those lips, were smeared with the blood of young victims from Medellin to Chicago? Have you ever seen a fifteen-year-old whore who will do anything for anyone just to get her next fix? A fifteen-year-old whore who should be at high school creating her future? Tell me this, Maria, have you ever looked into the eyes of a little girl just before she gets shot in the head, to force her parents into obedience?”

  She turned to face me. Her face was twisted and savage and her eyes were streaming tears. She screeched at me, “You don’t know anything about him! You assume because he is Colombian! You Yankee hijos de puta always assume, ‘Oh, he is Latino, he must traffic cocaine, oh, she is Latina, she must be a whore…’ but you don’t know nothin’!”

  My reply was quiet. “He works for Bloque Meta. Decapitation? If that is all they do to you, you can count yourself lucky. They rape, murder and torture systematically, and they don’t care who. Open your blouse.”

  She stared at me and crossed her arms in front of her. “What? No…”

  “Take your blouse off or I’ll take the damned thing off for you.” She backed away a step. “I have no interest in you sexually, Maria. I just want to show you something about yourself. Now take your damn blouse off.”

  She started to unbutton it and I took her arm and guided her toward the bathroom. As I did it she started to sob. Her bottom lip curled in and her eyes started to flood again. When she was standing in the bathroom doorway I gently took away her hands and removed her purple blouse. Her upper arms, her chest and her back were scored with deep purple wheels. I counted ten on her back, three on each arm and six across her chest and her belly.

  “Who are you trying to protect, Maria? Gonzalo? Look at you. You’re the lucky one. But next time you could be one of the unlucky ones. The unlucky ones get killed, or worse, their faces get cut off, or they get hooked on heroin and inducted into a short, brutal life of sexual slavery. And that, that is what you are protecting.”

  I turned her around. She leaned against my chest and I put my arms around her.

  “Where is he?”

  She spoke into my chest. “At home. He came up to my room. I told him I didn’t want to sleep with him. I never have. He said he was sick of being humiliated. That he had taken enough from you already. And he started beating me with his belt. Finally he left. I guess he went home.” She looked up at me. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  I said it without any particular feeling or inflection. It was just a fact. She shook her head. “You’re as bad as he is. What you did last night…”

  “That is stupid and naïve, Maria. You want to know why we can’t all ‘just get along’? I’ll tell you. Because there are people like Gonzalo in this world who abuse, murder and torture and rape other people indiscriminately. They don’t give a damn who you are or what you’ve done. If they need you they use you. If you fight them they destroy you. When they no longer need you they kill you.

  “And then there are people like me. We just take out the trash.”

  I went back to the bedroom and grabbed my shirt. She stood half-naked in the bathroom door and watched me dress.

  “If you warn him I’m coming, Maria. It will be the stupidest thing you ever did.”

  She didn’t answer, but I thought I saw a small shake of her head. I pulled on my boots and stood. “You want to be free?”

  “It’s all I have ever wanted.”

  Then make sure you know what to do with it, Maria, because it’s coming fast.”

  Nine

  I walked down to the Trade Winds. The bar was quiet and shaded and Helen was polishing glasses with a dishcloth. She looked at me but didn’t say anything, just kept polishing. I leaned on the bar with my hands.

  “I need a strong black coffee, and I need a car. Can I hire a car around here?”

  She didn’t answer. She put down the glass and the dishcloth she had in her hands and went to the Gaggia to make the coffee. While it was brewing she reached in her pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys, threw them on the counter.

  “How long do you need it for?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  She picked up the glass again. “You said you were going to call in the favor. Is this it?”

  “No.”

  She filled the cup with strong espresso and set it in front of me. Outside, the sun was glaring, people were shouting and laughing, mopeds buzzed like giant, angry insects. I sipped the hot black brew and asked her, “How many men has Gonzalo got?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “I left the police because I didn’t want anymore of this shit!”

  “But you want somebody to free your friend Maria from that shit. You want to clean the sewer, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

  She put the glass away and dropped the cloth on the bar. “I’m not a detective anymore. But I suppose he has about half a dozen men.”

  “Does that include the two boys he had with him last night?”

  She stared at me, then said quietly, “Yes… What did you do to them?”

  “They’re dead.”

  She screwed up her face. “How can you be so brutal?”

  I drained my coffee. “It’s not hard. I’ve seen what these people do to innocent people, mothers, children. As far as I am concerned I am capable of a limited amount of comp
assion. What I have, I save for people who are worth it. People who traffic drugs, murder children, rape mothers, they’re not worth it.”

  I left San Fernando along the only blacktop road on the island, headed west toward Jackstown, the capital of the island. It was set back from the main road, with a big, 16th-century church, a grand, Spanish colonial town hall in saffron and white, with green, wooden shutters, and a broad town square with six terraced bars, a baker, a butcher and a supermarket that sold floral shirts and straw hats alongside melons, mangos and milk.

  I stopped for a second coffee and had a look around. There was an art gallery which, from what I could make out, was the painter’s house where he held a permanent exhibition of his own work. And across the road from that, there was the St. George’s Island Police Department. They had three patrol cars, which I had seen that night, and a handful of men in khaki uniforms with Bermuda shorts and peaked caps. They were unarmed and two got you twenty the chief—if not all the staff—was in Gonzalo’s pay.

  I finished my little tour and, a little better informed, headed south out of town along a broad straight road of beaten earth that led, eventually, to the Barbary Cliffs Lighthouse. Either side of the road were dense pine forests which occasionally gave way to palm groves, banana plantations and sugarcane. But by and large it was forests of tall, spindly pines, with silver-red bark and a superabundance of exotic birds, none of which I could identify.

  After about two and a half miles I came to a gate on the left. There was an intercom. I pressed the call button and a voice asked me who I was.

  “David Friedman. I’m here to see Gonzalo.”

  The gate buzzed and swung slowly open. I followed the track through more tall, spindly pinewoods until the trees began to thin out and were replaced by windswept cliffs dotted with agave plants, giant aloe and banana groves. About a quarter of a mile off I could see a large, Spanish-style villa surrounded by coconut palms, green lawns and tropical gardens.

  I followed the road around in a broad sweep and approached the front of the house from the direction of the cliffs, along an avenue of alternating jacaranda and wisteria trees. The house itself was fronted by a broad, balustraded veranda which was surrounded by large bougainvillea bushes and shaded by Russian vine.

  From the center of the veranda, four broad steps swept down to the drive, and two guys with automatic rifles were standing there, watching me approach. They were not dressed in jungle shirts and Havaianas. They wore jeans and boots and sweatshirts, with black shades and ugly expressions on their faces.

  I pulled up and killed the engine, then swung down from the cab. The two guys, one pale skinned with a big moustache, the other clean-shaven and almost bald, watched me without saying anything. I approached the steps wondering if I was going to have to kill them now, and paused with my foot on the bottom step.

  “I’m here to see Gonzalo. You going to let me go through?”

  The moustache answered. “He’s waiting for you in the pool. Go through.”

  I walked into a large hall with huge terracotta tiles on the floor. It must have been forty feet across and thirty deep. The walls were whitewashed and a red pine staircase climbed up along the left wall to form a galleried landing on the three remaining sides. The ceiling, two stories up, was made of heavy, dark wooden beams.

  On my left, past the bottom of the stairs, there was a broad arch, and through it I found a vast living room with a mezzanine floor, a beaten bronze fireplace in the middle of the lower section, and skins of various types, from merino sheep to bull and bear, strewn at random across the floor. There were also nests of leather chairs and sofas that didn’t seem to follow any particular kind of pattern or system, and gave the place more the feel of a hotel lounge than a living room. There were no bookcases. This place housed minds that did not need to be fed.

  The far wall was all plate-glass sliding panels. A couple of the panels were open and outside I could see a vibrant, green lawn and a brilliant, turquoise pool glinting in the late-morning sun.

  Gonzalo was in the pool, with dark shades on, bobbing, kicking and pushing this way and that. With him were two black girls with nice figures and lots of hair, who were screaming and laughing apparently at nothing. Standing beyond the pool, on the lawn and in the shade of some banana trees, was another guy in green military camouflage with an assault rifle. As I approached the door I saw a fourth to the right, sitting smoking on the patio, and as I stepped through I glanced over to the left and saw a fifth at the corner of the house. That was five as far as I had seen. Chances were there were more I could not see. So much for Helen’s assessment.

  I stepped out into the sunshine. Gonzalo grinned at me and waved. “Good morning, Mr. Mossad, take a seat. You want a drink?”

  The two girls were looking at me and laughing, like he’d said something funny. I put my hands in my pockets and watched him a moment.

  “It’s a little early. Coffee would be good. You recruited an army since last night?”

  He barked a laugh. “I had a few boys flown over from Venezuela. You can never have too much security. You can never have too much men lookin’ out for you. Am I right?”

  I strolled toward a large, white, wrought-iron table with a huge white canvas parasol.

  “Are you ever wrong? How about that coffee? Is it going to make itself or do you need to tell somebody?”

  He turned to the guy on the patio who was sporting a red baseball cap and a moustache that would have made Saddam Hussein proud.

  “Carmelo, dígale a Olga que traiga café, ahorita mismito!”

  “Si, jefe.”

  Carmelo stepped inside and picked up a phone that must have looked space-age when bell bottoms and sideburns still seemed like a good idea. He said something about coffee and I dropped into a white, wrought-iron chair with green, floral cushions tied to it.

  “I did you a big favor yesterday, Gonzalo. I cleaned up your backyard. And what you offer me is coffee?” I watched the girls for a moment. They were swimming quietly now. They were graceful and shiny in the water. I added, “A guy could feel unappreciated.”

  He swam to the white steps and pulled himself out of the pool. He picked up an absurdly big, fluffy white towel and scrubbed his head with it, then wrapped it around his waist. It was bigger than him and made me realize how small he was. Five foot five, maybe, and skinny, with thick black hair on his chest and his legs. He carefully dried himself off. Before he sat down he turned to the girls in the pool.

  “OK, we gonna talk business. You go. Collect Olga, tell her to bring the coffee, then go. Come back tonight. We’ll party.”

  As they clambered out of the pool he sat across the table from me. “OK, David, let’s cut the bullshit, and you tell me what you want.”

  I made the face of mild surprise. “I went to a lot of trouble last night, Gonzalo, to make you aware that one thing I don’t traffic in, is bullshit.” I held up two fingers. “I want two things. I want a job worthy of my skills, and I want to know everything you can tell me about El Serbio.”

  He went real still and his eyes went real narrow. “Why in fock do you wanna know about El Serbio?”

  “That is none of your goddamn business. It’s personal and that is all you need to know. You can’t help me, say so and I’ll go elsewhere.”

  He raised both hands. “Whoa, take it easy. Don’t get sensitive on me.” He shrugged. “El Serbio been here maybe twenty years. He’s a kind of mystery guy. I don’t know if he is Serbian, maybe he’s a Croat or some other shit from Monte Negro or something. He don’t mess with nobody, nobody messes with him. He got some kind of private income, he got a guy who live with him—he’s not gay or nothin’, it’s his chauffer or somethin’—a cleaner, a cook…” He spread his hands. “What else?”

  “His name.”

  He turned to Carmelo. “Como se llama el pendejo del Serbio, oiga?”

  Carmelo thought about it and spat into a flower bed.

  “Constantino, Constantino Marcos.
”

  So far he was confirming what I had got from Aguilera and Helen. That was good, but I had an uncomfortable feeling it was too easy. I said, “Are there any other Balkans on the island? Anyone else from Serbia, Croatia…?”

  He was frowning at me like I was getting on his nerves. “I don’t know! Why would I know? Why you askin’ me this shit?”

  I spoke loudly, matching his irritation, sounding like I was getting mad too. “I don’t know, Gonzalo! Why would you know? Maybe because you control every fucking thing that happens on this fucking island! Is that a good enough reason? Or maybe because there are very powerful Mafias in the Balkans and you ought to know if you have a fucking Serbian living here! Or maybe because I did you a big favor yesterday and you ought to be wanting to help me and pay me back! That’s three good reasons right there. You want some more?”

  He pointed at me. “One day, one day soon, you gonna cross a line and I am going to cut you open, gringo.”

  “Yeah? Let me know when you have a date and I’ll put it in my diary so I don’t forget.”

  “Hijo de perra!”

  “Son of a bitch, right? That’s funny. It’s what your mother called my father as he was climbing out the window when your dad got home. How far you want to go, Gonzalo?” I didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I need to know if there are any other Balkan or southeast European refugees on the island. How long is it going to take you to find out?”

  There was a movement at the door and a comfortably large woman came out smiling with a tray of coffee. She set it down on the table, served us two cups, did a funny little curtsy and left.

  When she was gone, Gonzalo leaned forward and spoke low. “I can find out in ten minutes or fifteen. But listen to me, pendejo, I know is your style, but you godda show respect for me in front of my men. You understand?”

  I listened to him till he’d finished. Then I sighed and nodded. “Sure, you’re right. I’ll keep it in mind. Now listen to me. If there is Balkan Mafia here, we might have a problem. Don’t get me wrong, pal. I am looking out for my own interests here. Number one, numero uno, right? It just so happens that your interests and mine happen to be the same right now. And I hope it stays that way for many years to come…”